Earlier today, Cam wrote about the New Black Panther Party toting long guns in Minneapolis. A lot of people saw this and got very upset. Cam addressed the legal concerns in his piece.
I’m not focused on that.
Instead, I want to focus on the sins of the past.
See, this isn’t the first time a group calling itself the Black Panthers has been seen carrying firearms. It’s also not the first time that someone from the right has gotten uncomfortable enough to say some stupid things about it.
But while we all now think of California as gun-control central, that wasn’t always the case. It is now, and it started because of people reacting to the Black Panthers.
The Black Panther Party, founded in Oakland in 1966, is one of the most famous political organizations in American history, but what’s lesser known is the direct impact the party had on gun control laws in California.
The Mulford Act made it a felony in California to openly carry firearms in public without a permit. But what led up to then-Gov. Ronald Reagan signing it into law?
On May 2, 1967, several Black Panther Party members occupied the State Capitol in Sacramento, armed with guns, in protest of the proposed legislation. The historic demonstration was a watershed moment for both the party and the state, but it didn’t come out of nowhere. The organization’s momentum and willingness to bare arms already had lawmakers nervous before that day ever arrived.
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“Black and brown people were getting brutalized and killed in the community. Black people didn’t know their rights, so we would go out and patrol the police,” said Fredrika Newton, the widow of Huey.
Xavier Buck, historian and Black Panther Party Museum director, said that after the Watts Uprising in 1965 there were “cop watches” in Los Angeles.
“The party were the first ones that said ‘Oh, we’re going to do it armed, within our legal rights,'” Buck said.
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For the Black Panther Party, stopping the Mulford Act represented survival, an ability to hold law enforcement accountable and upholding constitutional rights. But for the California Legislature, getting the Mulford Act signed into law was an opportunity to keep power in the hands of law enforcement and slow down the momentum of the Panthers’ movement. Yet the passage of the act was the first step in gun regulation, backed by both then-Gov. Ronald Reagan and the National Rifle Association.
Reagan signed the Mulford Act in the summer of 1967. As a Republican governor and a conservative, he abandoned his typical values on gun control. It’s a stance he would change again in the early 1980s, citing the second amendment to the Constitution at a meeting of the NRA when he was president.
What we had were militant black activists walking around with guns, something no one had an issue with before, when it was white people who opted to do so. It might have had more to do with their politics than their skin color, or it might have had everything to do with their skin. It doesn’t really matter because it was wrong.
The issue that far too many people have is that they approve of people’s rights up until they start using them in a manner the person in question doesn’t approve of.
Right now, a lot of people are losing their minds over the New Black Panther Party waltzing around Minneapolis, seemingly serving as a threat to federal law enforcement, but you know what? As long as they’re standing there, even if they’re trying to intimidate people, let them. Especially as it’s clear that most of them don’t know what they’re doing with those guns, anyway. An MP22 rifle, cheap optics, rear sights flipped down where they’ll do no one any good, plate carriers without plates, everything to look scary without actually being prepared to be effective.
Mock them for it. Make fun of them for looking like the cosplayers they are. Poke at them for being a freaking joke, for trying to ramp up tensions and deluding themselves into thinking they’re ready for a fight they’d never survive. That’s all fine. That’s the appropriate response to something like what we’re seeing in Minnesota.
But do not, for one minute, think that this is grounds to abandon Second Amendment principles. We made that mistake in California, and now look where we’re at. The Mulford Act has also been used as a cudgel by many to claim that we’re only pro-gun as long as it’s white people with the guns. That “argument” has lost its sting over time, but some will still try it from time to time, and it’s tiresome.
Let them be stupid right up until they break the law as it currently exists, then react appropriately. That’s all you need to do.
Do that and the problem goes away on its own.
Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment.
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